Homemade DCF77 receiver [FAIL]

A few weeks ago our old clock radio broke. Out of curiosity I’ve disassembled it: I wanted to remove the DCF77 clock radio signal receiver. Unfortunately, the clock contained a single board, but the receiver part was clearly distinguishable from the rest.

The circuit board of my broken clock radio. The radio signal receiver is marked with a yellow frame.

For fun, I cut out the relevant part of the board and replaced/refreshed the solder joints. I also added four connections for 1.5 Volt (power supply), the clock signal and a power-on line. (At least I think that’s what the last two lines should be).

My low cost self made DCF77 clock signal receiver.

I have not yet managed to get a stable time signal. On my digital storage oscilloscope I get occasional spikes with a distance of one second (what you would expect), but only a few of them and then nothing… The problem is probably the correct initialization of the chip under the black blob (a so called chip-on-board, by the way). Maybe, I also damaged a part of the receiver while cutting out the board, or when resoldering the two joints on the 77.5 kHz antenna.

Update: Well, after playing a bit more with the receiver I’m pretty sure I damaged it while cutting it out. I used common initialization sequences and did not manage to get it work. Too bad…